Dear Sirius
by Exceeds Expectations
Summary: I still think of you. /For Laura


**A/N:** Inspired by Jeanann Verlee's _40 Love Letters, _only not nearly as brilliant and far more angsty. I would urge you to go listen to her version, but that would make mine look even worse in comparison. So...don't do that. (Or do. It's fabulous.)

Thanks to Ash for looking over this!

Dedicated to Laura, because I still think of her.

* * *

Dear Sirius,

I still think of you.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

How many sleepless nights did you spend wishing the warmth of my skin was a wildfire ravaging the homes of those we loved? Those _I alone_ loved?

I slept soundly most nights; I trusted you.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I have dreams where you are covered in ash and soot and guilt and your hands are red and wet and shining and I can't stop staring. You fall at my feet and I just stand there and do nothing. You don't apologise. But you don't laugh this time either.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

We were the lost beats of silence in this cacophonous melody of life. We were the rest between notes, the intake of breath. We were the lungfuls of fresh air and the quieting vibrato of a closing throat. We were soundless, you and I, and I loved that. Now silence is all I have left.

I think I'm slowly going mad.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I met a stranger today who recognised me. She asked me if, looking back, I could've seen it coming. I told her. "_I'm not sure."_

I meant, "_No". _But I couldn't say it. Not to someone who never knew you.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I still think of you.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I heard about your escape. I had almost managed to convince myself you were not a true thing, just an imaginary horror story, a make-believe monster worse than even me. It's so much harder to pretend when your name echoes in other peoples' mouths, your face leers from shop windows and lampposts and newspapers, your memory – romanticised like that of a dead lover, softened by my battered heart – touches me. Holds me. Kisses me.

Tells me he is sorry. (Means it.)

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I don't know how you did it. I don't know how, or why, or why _now, _but I do know one thing. If you find me, do not come to me unarmed. I will not hold my arms wide for you, will not let you slip back in to the hole you left in me – I have stuffed that mostly with paperbacks and the Order and the odd glass (_bottle_) of wine, plastered over it with new memories and new friends and dreamless sleep potions and hope, so much hope.

If you find me, make sure it is daylight. Make sure it is crowded, make sure you have witnesses, make sure you are ready to hurt me face-on this time, because I will not welcome you back.

I will kill you, Sirius. I will kill you so that I finally have a reason to feel guilty. I will kill you.

(But I won't. I won't.)

**::**

Dear Sirius,

Harry, oh Sirius, _Harry. _He is exactly as we thought he would be. He is James and he is Lily and when I think of what you have done to him, of the life you have robbed him of, I feel sick to my stomach.

Stay away from him, Sirius. You have ruined him enough in this life.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I still think of you.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I spent so long trying to forget you – every sharpened edge, every ivory slope of bone and skin, every pink-lipped pout or smile or laugh or _I love you _ – and now you are a shadow man, a half-shattered thing, with skin like melted wax and eyes like burnt out lightbulbs.

Sirius, Sirius, Sirius. Forgive me. I never knew.

I never knew.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

Strange how cold your hands are. Cool fingers brushing time and time again over the roughened, scarred, stretched canvas of me, painted with dejection and loss and wasted time; I can tell you the story of these missing years with my body alone.

You do not ask and I do not tell. Instead, I show you, with the ruin of me, how much I have missed you.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I know how much he looks like James. I know it hurts. I break a little every time I hear the half-formed _Prongs _die on your lips.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

This isn't how I imagined us. I pictured a thousand different futures for us once, but never were you an escaped convict, never were we wronged like this, never were we always looking over our shoulders for enemies. Or for friends. Or for rats and traitors and round little boys who grew into nervous men with watery eyes.

It's easy to live like this with you. Easier still to imagine all the lives we could have lead somewhere far from here. I'm still rather fond of our Paris fantasy, of me hunched over an old typewriter and you lounging artfully on an armchair, cigarette limp between your lips.

I am still rather fond of you. Even here. (Especially here.)

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I will never tire of the taste _I'm sorry_, not on your tongue or mine.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

When we said _battle _you said _merlin, yes _in the same tone that only our bedroom walls heard, that only I heard. I wish you hadn't. I wish you'd said _no. _I wish you'd said nothing. I wish you stayed. I wish you'd listened to me.

I wish you were still here. I wish, I wish.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I have mourned you too many times in this short life, always without a body to bury or burn or hold in the morning light. Always without a goodbye, always without a warning, always right when everything had a chance to be okay. Okay. I will never be okay.

I love you. I always did, even when I didn't. I love you.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

We were never meant to have forever. I know that now.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

She is pretty and her hands are delicate things, cocooned in mine so carefully, warm and soft. She smiles, a heartbeat on her lips, and I don't even think of you when I kiss her.

I promise you, I don't.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I keep your letters in a box under our bed. Every one with faded scrawls and half-torn edges. I will not let her read a single one; what's left of you is mine and mine alone.

**::**

Dear Sirius,

I _still _think of you.


End file.
